ACE Health Coach Helper: Lesson 1

Jessie Newell has been a Study Coach at ACE since 2013. She earned her B.S. in Kinesiology: Fitness Specialist from San Diego...More »

Jessie Newell has been a Study Coach at ACE since 2013. She earned her B.S. in Kinesiology: Fitness Specialist from San Diego State University and is currently certified as an ACE Personal Trainer, Group Fitness Instructor, Health Coach, and Advanced Health and Fitness Specialist. She has also earned a certification in Flow Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Let It Go Yoga, Yoga Therapy, and Yoga Lifestyles to complete the 200-hr program through Let It Go Yoga in Santa Barbara, CA. She loves to learn and enjoys being continuously challenged by the questions of those she works with. The choice to pursue health and fitness stems from her two passions: helping people and science! Since she was 19 she worked in a Wellness Center setting and saw the positive impact that an active lifestyle has on one’s well-being, and because of this, aspires to help others find their happiest and healthiest self through her knowledge in the wellness field.

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Hello to all my fellow health and fitness professionals who are looking to take your career to the next level by becoming an ACE-certified Health Coach! My name is Jessie and I am a new Study Coach here at ACE. To better help those seeking our study assistance, I am preparing to take my Health Coach Certification Exam, and it occurred to me, “Why not blog about it for those who are going to take this same journey?” And thus my “Health Coach Helper” was created. I am so excited and I hope that all those considering the Health Coach Certification find this blog series informative and beneficial.

First, I highly recommend establishing a timeline so the material doesn’t get put on the back burner. Even if you miss a few days or weeks here and there, this time will help you figure out how to get yourself back on track. If you purchased one of our bundles, you already have a six-month timeframe to schedule your exam (NOT take it—just schedule it), but some of you may want to move at a faster or slower pace. My personal goal is to take the exam before the end of the year, so I am aiming to accomplish one lesson in Academy Select every other week, which I’ll write about in future blog posts.

Lesson One

Now for the good stuff! The first lesson in Academy Select covers chapters 1, 2 and 5, which discuss the skills needed to be a successful health coach. (Don’t worry if you didn’t purchase the Academy Select Program—I will give you a breakdown.) There was a little bit of overlap in the chapters, which is nice because it helps to reinforce the topics. For each of these chapters, I read the manual and then did the Master the Manual Workbook, using the manual to assist me. However, I did not use the manual for the multiple-choice questions at the end of each section. I tried to answer those on my own, and then if I answered incorrectly, I went through the Health Coach Manual until I found the part in the book that discussed that topic. The other things I noticed and found to be really valuable were the “Think It Through” and “Expand Your Knowledge” sections. If you ACTUALLY go through the examples given, it’s not surprising that the information seems to sink in a little better.

For those who do have the Academy Select program, I watched the video after reading the chapters and it was very helpful in reiterating the information I had read. However, I think for this next lesson I might watch the video before I read the manual to see if it makes any difference. I missed four questions on the quiz, but they were all questions where I could identify why I had thought erroneously, so I felt good about it even though I got the answers wrong.

Key Takeaways

To sum everything up, the things I found most important were:

1. How to identify the wants and needs of your client by understanding his or her personality and which stage of change he or she is in

I hope you found this information helpful. My next blog will cover chapters 3, 4, 14 and 18. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Resource Center at 888-825-3636, Ext. 796, or resource@acefitness.org.

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